Fallen in love with a drawing
by North13
Summary: Mathew is an aspiring artist, while on a trip to the parks close by to him he draws everyone he sees not really noticing any of them until he goes home later and one portrait of a tall male with a slightly too big nose and a childish smile catches his eye.


Mathew Williams. Twenty two years old. A commission salary based artist. Living off of the income he made from that, a small job he had in a animal shelter, and the money that he'd saved up before high school finished. He was able to draw anything from realism in such detail that the drawing was thought to be a photograph, and sometimes even mistaken for something real, to the most imaginative fantasy type drawings. He could do them all. He'd been drawing since he was four and has never stopped.

He had graduated from his high school at the top of his school's honour roll, with the best grades on the list. His high grades weren't needed at all though. You don't exactly need high grades to become an artist, you just need the talent and passion for drawing, sculpting or whatever is needed for your chosen profession.

His parents had been completely supportive of his decision, they were fine with anything he chose to do that he actually wanted, not just felt like doing. They could see that he was good enough to succeed, there was no need for them to worry about that. They were alright with whatever job he wanted to do during his life.

And they had stayed supportive of all of his choices until his Mom had died when he was nineteen. Her official cause of death was from a complication with her surgery to remove the cancer that had been in her brain? It was located just behind one of her ears. The right one. The doctors had found and removed the brain tumor growing inside of her, that hated cancer, but, the doctors doing the surgery just weren't careful enough when they were taking it out. An air bubble had gotten into her brain, traveled to her frontal cortex, made her go into spasms and eventually killed her.

Mathew had been in University at the time to learn more about how he could improve his drawing. The worst thing about her unexpected death was that he couldn't even remember the last thing he had said to her. After all, he had thought the doctors had done a marvelous job, they had told him the surgery was successful, although her death proved it was anything but successful. And so at that time just before the negligence of her doctors cost her that one thing Mathew had wished for her to never pay, she had been the one that had driven him to his new and exciting University life.

She had had somewhere to be, they were both horribly nervous about him going off alone and so they had rushed to move his bags out fast. The day she had dropped him off they hadn't thought of how much they would miss each other or about committing to memory every word each other said, they had been only filled with the hyper, non-thinking feeling a person gets when they have been scared into their fight or flight instinctual response, or have either stayed up too late or have woken up too suddenly. They thought of nothing on that trip but to go fast and efficiently.

Mathew could only hope that among everything that he had called after her were the words "I love you" or "I will miss you". He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember anything she had said to him, nothing at all.

His Dad had made Mathew stay in school while his Dad cremated her, his lovely artistic Mother, alone. And then, a year later, his Dad also died. This time it was the cancer itself that had gotten to him. Mathew kept both of their ashes together, side by side in little jars a friend of theirs had carved for them, they rested together at home, safe from the hazards of this strange world now forever more.

Mathew had graduated from University and had been selling his artwork since, just like his Mother used to sell her paintings, the paintings he had already given away to the rest of his distant family. He had only kept the paintings she had been working on when she died, all of them unfinished reminders that she was gone.

So it was in memory of her that he had this little tradition of his. On the day of her death every year he would always walk to the parks around the city he lived in and would draw the people he saw along the way. Because, the human figure had always been her favorite subject to bring to life on her canvas, sketchbook, or journal. It had always been her favorite, always.

'In memory of Mom.' Mathew thought as he walked out of his front door once again. His sketchbook was clenched tightly in his left hand and there were different pencils shoved into his back pocket. And just like that he left, shutting the door behind him softly and readying his sketchbook so that he could draw as he walked.

'In memory of Mom. I love you and I miss you so, so much right now. Would you have expected better of me had you lived? You had always wanted grandchildren and I had never told you, not once before you and Dad had died that I was gay. This is the only way that I can honour you now that you're dead, I guess. I'll draw you up a world full of people that you can talk to all of the time wherever you are right now. You can tell them all of your thoughts just like how you used to before and then maybe I can hear them too.'


End file.
